


what your eyes can see

by CampionSayn



Series: the anthony trollope way [6]
Category: Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Flash Fic, Gen, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:40:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27254326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CampionSayn/pseuds/CampionSayn
Summary: It wasn't anyone's fault. Or it was everyone's fault. Jack wasn't really sure.
Relationships: Jack Merridew & Ralph, Ralph & Simon (Lord of the Flies)
Series: the anthony trollope way [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1511744
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	what your eyes can see

The ending was not the same as it could have been from one mistake made to another.  
  
Jack and the others never did find Ralph after they set the island alight and blazing, great pillars of black smoke spiraling into the air. And from out of the wild abandon and misplaced rage, walked an adult in a navy uniform, smiling dubiously at their painted faces, their sticks sharpened (both ends of them, some even with streaks of blood) and how wide their eyes went at the sight of him.  
  
  
The Merridew boy felt the ringing silence that followed all of them stopping like an internal meter of society vs savagery. He would remember it on the small wading boat they took into the water, and all the way back to England on the greater navy ship that decided they were more important than searching for enemies that far out in the ocean.  
  
  
Nobody mentioned Ralph, even as Jack kept looking back on the small boat, and wandered back to the bow of the ship after being looked over and cleaned up _(actual clothing; they might have belonged to an officer and were much too big, but they were clean and pressed and real)_ and given milk with a bit of honey in it to clear out the taste of smoke and ashes.  
  


* * *

  
_Years. It was years later, after the war that never seemed to end finally halted with the signing of a long paper promising not to drop bombs from one place to the next; Jack couldn't handle the memory of silence and the times he ended up making his way to the docks along the Thames._  
  
He started it mere days after he was greeted, like the rest of the boys, by his parents wrapping him up in their arms, tears running down their faces, hands touching him even as he flinched at the sudden movement.  
  
They'd all gone home _(except the ones that didn't; except for Roger sent to the mental wards for challenging the ship's captain and going at him with a knife because he so missed the sight of blood and the look of fear)_ and returned to their beds in an England that was still watching the horizon in case they needed to evacuate. They ate meals and dressed in clean clothes and, after some three months, returned to school and learned and listened and tried to keep on living.  
  
  
Except Jack ended up going to the river, following the line of it reaching out to the sea. In his uniform, pressed and perfect, he stood along the railing of the docks in the flurry and dash of everything that went on in that area with the merchants and the sailors and everyone else; his eyes on the line between sea and sky.  
  
  
The first time, he didn't go back until after dark, and he regretted it immediately, because he tensed up from the cold and the shadows that followed it. The air too still, the smells unfamiliar after the island; the sounds from people closing up shop sending him running back home at full speed and tilt until he'd practically torn his way into his home and hidden in the closet of his room until his mother found him still as a spring hare.  
  
He didn't eat that night, and certainly not the next morning (everything smelled like meat burning on a spit and he was afraid that the eggs his mother offered would turn to blood in his mouth) but he still went to classes and still, still, he returned to look beyond the Thames and the docks. He merely returned home before the sun blacked out beneath the waves and he felt himself the prey of everything else.  
  
_(The Beast was always there, the same as his heartbeat.)_  
  
  
Roger never left the wards. Many of the small children recovered in their own ways. Sam'n'Eric somehow became friends with Maurice and ended up rooming together at University.  
  
Jack planned and worked and learned and never sang choir again (he would rather have died; no matter how much his mother begged him to return to church--how could she fathom he'd ever have faith again merely earned his pity at her earnest face) and took up navigation and boating courses in his free time.  
  
  
He owed it to three young boys that never got their fair shake to at least try to find bones to bring back to grieving families.

* * *

  
  
The regrown trees, green as fresh born spring crops, were a surprise, and something of a comfort.  
  
  
  
The sight of two figures there to greet Jack on the shore, not quite as tall as him, but broad and sturdy from the effort it took just to live, drove something through him that he couldn't quite place.  
  
  
"...Jack?"  
  
  
  
"Ralph... Simon..."


End file.
